Microsoft Office (1991) 225 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations Publishing PIM Database Windows MacOS

Microsoft Office is a bundle of Microsoft's productivity application. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and later Mail, Office Manager, and Outlook. The "1.x" versions of Microsoft Office were simply a marketing bundle of the standalone products sold together with no other packaging changes. Even though these were distinct applications, rather than one single monolithic program, they shared a similar user interface, integrated well together and shared the ability to embed documents from one application in the documents of another.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.0
• 4.2
• 4.3
• 95
• 97/98
• 2000
• 2001 (Mac)
• XP (2002 Beta)

Paint Shop Pro (1990) 68 Graphics Windows

JASC Paint Shop Pro is a simple and easy to use bit-mapped graphics editor. It supports a wide variety of file formats, and photo manipulation functions that were comparable to PhotoShop. It has good support for editing 256 color palletized images that made it ideal for editing web graphics. It was first released in 1990 for Windows 3.0 as just "Paint Shop", and early versions gained popularity through the distribution of shareware releases. It lost popularity in 2003 when 8.0 was introduced with a redesigned UI and in 2004, JASC was acquired by Corel.

• 1.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x
• 7.x

Norton Commander (1986) 67 Utility DOS OS2 Windows

Norton Commander is a MS-DOS based file shell that was widely popular due to it's two column design. You could easily copy and move files between one folder or another, execute DOS commands and more. It competed against many other file managers including Gazelle Q-DOS and Xtree

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 1.x (OS2)
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 1.x (Win)
• 5.5x
• 2.x (Win)

Photoshop (1988) 65 Graphics MacOS Windows

Photoshop is a powerful drawing and photo manipulation program for both Mac and Windows. The Macintosh version was released by Adobe in 1990, although a very small number were bundled with Barneyscan slide scanners prior to that. Photoshop contained many advanced features including layered images, advanced color control, and plug-ins. Prior to its release, many of its features were only found in high end dedicated photo pre-processing systems.

• 0.x (beta)
• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x

Adobe Illustrator (1988) 64 Graphics Windows MacOS Unix

Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. It was often sold as a companion product to the bit-map/photo editor Adobe Photoshop. Illustrator was originally released in 1987 for the Apple Macintosh. Early versions were ported to NexT, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Solaris.

• 1.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.5
• 7.0
• 8.0
• 9.0
• 10.0

CorelDraw! (1989) 56 Graphics Publishing Windows OS2 Unix

Corel Draw is a vector based drawing and illustration program. It is primarily a Windows application, but was ported to Mac OS, Mac OS X, Linux, CTOS and OS/2. It competed against Aldus Freehand, Adobe Illustrator, and Micrografx Designer.

• 1.x
• 2.0
• 2.5
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 5.0
• 3.5 (Unix)
• 6.0
• 7.0

After Dark (1989) 56 Novelty MacOS Windows DOS

After Dark, from Berkeley Systems, Inc, is a set of entertaining screen savers for Mac and Windows. After Dark for Windows started off as "Magic Screen Saver" for Windows 2.x. After Dark was most famous for its "Flying Toasters" screen saver. Afterdark was very popular on both the early Macintosh computers and Windows 3.0, as neither included any kind of screen saver or screen blanker that would help prevent screen burn-in.

• 1.0 for Macintosh
• Magic ScreenSaver
• 1.0 for Windows
• 2.x
• 1.0 for DOS
• 3.x
• 4.x
• Tenth Anniversary
• 9

Lotus SmartSuite (1992) 52 Word Processor Spreadsheet Presentations PIM Database Windows OS2

IBM/Lotus SmartSuite is an office suite from Lotus software for Windows and OS/2. SmartSuite includes SmartCenter, 1-2-3, Word Pro, Freelance Graphics, Approach, Organizer, and ScreenCam.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• For OS/2
• 4.0
• 96
• 97
• 9.0
• 9.1
• For OS2 Warp 4
• 9.5
• 9.6
• 9.7
• 9.8

ArcView GIS (1996) 45 Graphics Other Database Windows

ArcView, from Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. is a geographical information system program for Win9x/NT.

• 3.0
• 3.3

Microsoft Plus! (1995) 40 Utility Novelty Windows

Microsoft Plus! was an add-on package to Windows that added desktop themes, screen savers, sound effects, power-toys, and other assorted goodies for the home user. Plus! 95 also included Internet Explorer 1.0, which was not included in all Windows 95 distributions.

• 95
• 98

Norton Utilities (1983) 39 Utility DOS Unix MacOS Windows

The Norton Utilities is a suite of disk and system utilities designed to enhance system performance and stability. It started off as a set of disk utilities written by Peter Norton, and later was sold by Symantec. It competed against Central Point PC Tools and the Mace Utilities. In 2003, Norton Utilities was merged with Norton SystemWorks, but later split back out.

• 2.0x
• 3.00
• 3.10
• 4.0
• 4.5
• For System V
• 1.0 for Mac
• 5.0
• 6.0
• 2.0 for Mac
• 7.0
• 3.x for Mac
• 8.0
• 1.0 (95) for Win
• 2.0 (95) for Win
• for NT 4.0
• 3.0 for Win
• 4.x for Mac
• 4.0 for Win
• 5.0 for Mac
• 2001 for Win
• 6.0 for Mac

Instant Artist / Print Artist (1992) 37 Graphics Publishing Novelty DOS Windows

Instant Artist, later renamed to Print Artist, is a greeting card and sign creation program that uses vectorized graphics. It was created by The Pixellite Group, the original authors of The Print Shop, and published in 1992 by Autodesk. It was later sold by Sierra On-line. It features a high quality set of generic reusable clip art. The clip art uses vector based technology that was also used in BannerMania.

• 1.0 (DOS)
• 1.0
• 2.0
• 3.0
• 4.0
• 6.0
• 8.0

Adobe Streamline (1992) 36 Graphics Publishing Windows

Adobe Streamline is an image conversion and manipulation tool that aids conversion of bit-mapped images in to PostScript line art for use in tools such as Adobe Illustrator.

• 3.0
• 4.0

System Commander (1996) 32 Utility DOS

System commander, from V Communications, Inc, was a commercial boot manager for PCs. It offered a graphical menu and the ability to hide other partitions from the selected OS. It supported a variety of OSes including DOS, Windows 9x, Windows NT/2000, Linux, OS/2, and various Unixes.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• Deluxe 4.00
• 2000 (5.x)

Harvard Graphics (1986) 24 Graphics DOS Windows

Harvard Graphics, from Software Publishing Corporation and initially called Harvard Presentation Graphics, is a graphing/plotting/presentation creation application for DOS. It was extremely popular in the late 1980s. At release, it competed against many graphing products such as PFS:Graph (AKA IBM Graphing Assistant ), Microsoft Chart, ChartMaster, and Cricket Graph, just to name a small few. A Windows port was released in 1991, but it lost out to Microsoft Powerpoint.

• A.00
• A.01
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 1.0 for Windows
• 2.0 for Windows
• 3.0 for Windows
• 4.0 for Windows

Encarta (1993) 23 Reference Windows MacOS

Microsoft Encarta was a home oriented interactive encyclopedia that was often sold with new OEM machines. Unlike a paper encyclopedia, Encarta took full advantage of being on a computer, with updates from the Internet, sound clips and movies, interactive charts and games, and good navigation.

• 1994
• 1995
• 1996
• 1997
• 1998
• 1999

Packard Bell Navigator (1993) 23 Utility Other Windows DOS

Packard Bell Navigator is an alternate user interface that replaces the Windows 3.1 Program Manager shell. It presents the content of your computer as a series of rooms.

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 3.5
• 3.6
• 3.9

3D Home Architect (1993) 23 Graphics Windows

Broderbund's 3D Home Architect is a home-design oriented CAD program. It includes a variety of home decor related objects, and can render the results in 3D.

• 1.0
• 2.0

PartitionMagic (1995) 22 Utility DOS Windows

A tool from PowerQuest, and later Symantec, that enables manipulation of partitions through its own bootable media. PartitionMagic can shrink, grow, or move partitions without the need to backup and restore files in that partition. It supported a variety of file systems, and the core DOS-based parition tool fit on a bootable 1.44mb floppy disk. It was extremely popular, and made installing or removing multiple OSes much easier.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.0
• 7.x

Ghost (2000) 20 Utility DOS

Ghost, originally released in 1995 by Binary Research and later under Symantec with the "Norton" title, is a PC cloning and imaging tool. It can image and restore drives to drives of different sizes, supports many different file systems, and supports many different archiving and communications methods. Ghost 7.5 and earlier support running from DOS. Later versions are Windows-only.

• 7.x

XTree (1985) 16 Utility DOS Windows

XTree is an easy to use text-mode file manager. It pioneered the use of a GUI-like hierarchy tree, and provides many integrated file viewers. It competed against many other file managers including Gazelle Q-DOS and Norton Commander

• 1.x
• 2.x
• Pro 1.x
• Pro Gold 1.x
• Gold 2.x
• Easy
• Gold 3.x
• Gold for Windows 4.0

Windows Resource Kit (1991) 16 Utility Windows

The Microsoft Windows Resource kit is a set of supplementary tools for managing and deploying Microsoft Windows. The first Windows Resource kit was released in 1991 for Windows 3.0. Most, but not all, Windows versions after that had corresponding Resource Kits. These were often freely downloadable from Microsoft.

• 3.x
• 95
• NT 4.0
• 98
• 2000

PC Tools (1985) 15 Utility DOS Windows

PC Tools, from Central Point Software, is a system and disk utility suite similar to the Norton Utilities. Central Point also produced a similar set of tools for the Apple Macintosh known as MacTools. Central Point Backup, bundled as part of PC-Tools, was also offered as a standalone product.

• 1.x
• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.x
• 6.x
• 7.x
• 8.x
• 1.0 for Windows
• 9.x
• 2.0 for Windows

QEMM (1990) 15 Utility DOS Windows

Quarterdeck QEMM is a DOS Extended Memory Manager for 386+ computer which allows you to make use of memory beyond the 640kb barrier. It can also be used with QRAM, a utility for freeing up the 640k base memory.

• 5.x
• 6.x
• 7.x
• 8.x
• 9.x

Flash (1999) 14 Graphics Video Windows

Macromedia Flash is a vector animation package originally developed by FutureWave and later acquired by Adobe. Flash can export animation as video files or in its own proprietary interactive vector animation format playable by the Flash Player. Flash versions prior to 5 do not include the ActionScript scripting language. The interaction is instead scripted using drag-an-drop "actions".

• 4.x
• 5.x